Weekend Reads 5/9/15

If Black People Lived As Long As White People, Election Results Would Be Very Different

According to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 8.5 million black people died during that 35-year period. But if the mortality rates had been comparable, an additional 2.7 million black people would have been alive, and of those, an estimated 1 million would have cast votes in the 2004 election.

Elon Musk's Grand Plan to Power the World with Batteries

The “Powerwall Home Battery” offers either 7- or 10-kWh of storage, and will allow consumers to store energy they produce with a solar array—even go off the grid if they want. It’s available for small businesses as well, while bigger operations will want the Powerpack, a 100kWh refrigerator-esque unit, to use more renewable energy, avoid peak demand charges, and keep things running in the event of a power outage.

Ancient Native American city may have been done in by Mississippi floods

Like all societies that disappear, we naturally wonder what brought this one to an end around 1350 AD, after a run of hundreds of years. Several familiar scenarios have been proposed: drought, over-exploitation of natural resources, and conflict. However, rather than the onset of a drought, it may have been the end of a dry period that did in Cahokia.

Is NASA Moving Toward a Hyperspace Drive?

According to a report from industry watcher NASASpaceFlight.com, the EM drive could take a spacecraft to the moon in a matter of hours, and a trip to Mars in 70 days. It's not exactly a hyperspace drive, but it's surely a step in the right direction.